In her 2006 essay examining the "global turn" in rhetoric and composition, Wendy Hesford sought to "foster reflection about the possibilities of an imagined global geography" and to "examine the ways in which scholars imperil or safeguard disciplinary identities and methods that take for granted the nation-state and citizen-subject as units of analysis and ignore the global forces shaping individual lives and literate practices" (789). Almost a decade later we have seen scholarship that takes up the "imagined global geography" come to the forefront of the field, often gaining recognition by the Conference on College Composition and Communication with its major awards (e.g., Adsanatham; Berry, Hawisher, and Selfe; Canagarajah; You).

While my own work has focused on Asian Americans and their rhetorical and literacy practices, I have begun to consider the implications of what Hesford identifies in her second point above: how scholars may "take for granted the nation-state and citizen-subject as units of analysis and ignore the global forces shaping individual lives and literate practices." What does it mean to reframe the rhetorical work of Asian Americans as a transnational process and practice? How does challenging the nation-state and citizen-subjects as the object of analysis reveal larger networks of activity? And perhaps most central to my current research is to consider the (trans) socio-historical contexts and global forces that have shaped Asian American lives and literate practices. That is, how do we think across time and understand the implications of history in the rhetorical practices of today's Asian Americans? How do we think across space both in terms of movement across actual borders between nations or locations and movement across discursive spaces that regulate the status and activity of...